Professor Eberhard
Jäckel

Forger and
Fraud

Jäckel is one of David Irving's most
determined critics, and more than once procured his removal
from German television round-table discussion programmes
like Berliner
Salon on October 3, 1989. For one such book-length
attack by him on Mr Irving, see the Nizkor
site. In an article in Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung on January 26, 1980 Jäckel argued that it
was "pedagogically desirable" occasionally to lie about
Germany's recent past.

Quick
navigation

81 DUKE STREETLONDON W.1

TELEPHONE 01-499 9409

London, den 20. Mai 1977

Dear Professor Jäckel:

Correct.
I did ask Viking Press Inc. to mail to you a copy of the
English-language edition of the second part of my big Hitler
biography, HITLER'S
WAR. (The first part, THE WAR
PATH, appears in Germany in the spring of 1978.) I
regret that you have based your review for
Geschichte in Wissenschaft und
Unterricht on the Ullstein Verlag edition, since --
as you no doubt know -- I consider that the publishers
debased the German edition by unauthorised text changes, and
I have forbidden them to publish it further because of this.
The American/English edition is the definitive one.

Correct, too. I did not read your excellent work
"Hitlers Weltanschauung"
at the time. I had a choice between basing my book on the
original research and documentation, or on the available
books; Joachim Fest and most other Hitler authors
have taken the latter, cheaper, shorter easier course; I
refused to, and tried to use only the documents. It is far
safer to do so, in fact. For instance, I was puzzled to see
that in "Frankreich in Hitlers
Europa" you rely at all on Hans Speidel's
book, "Invasion 1944", when it is notoriously inaccurate;
whereas the records of Heeresgruppe B exist in great volume
(National Archives, T311, rolls 1 -- 6, 278, and T84, rolls
280 to 282). I have decided to write all my biographies by
this technique. You will find many grounds
for complaint in my forthcoming biography of Rommel,
just completed; and Churchill,
on which I am just embarking! I may make errors of
judgement, but on balance the absence of errors of fact will
make my biographies more valuable, I hope. You may regard me
as a "dissident biographer".

Now to your main argument, on Hitler's role in the
liquidation of the European Jews. (You notice how specific
those words are?) Before replying to your extremely
courteously worded letter, I have today obtained a copy of
your book, "Hitlers
Weltanschauung," alarmed, I must admit, but also
intrigued by the prospect that you might have found
documents incriminating Hitler which eluded me during my
long years of search.

First, let me compliment you on the readability of your
book, which I devoured in one session this afternoon. But
again I must criticise your standards of evidence: a bawdy
proclamation by Hitler to the world in the 1920s that he's
going to use the sword to move out
[entfernen] the Jews,
and that the episode will be a bloody one, is not proof that
he ordered their liquidation twenty years later; nor is it
adequate proof -- when faced with definite, precise words to
the contrary -- to quote indefinite, imprecise utterances by
the same man in his verbatim, extempore public speeches.
Kampfparolen are not proof.

In Hitler's case, he never once goes further than talking
in the most imprecise manner -- blustering, bloodthirsty,
bragging and bullying -- of "the destruction of Jewry"
[Vernichtung des
Judentums], or "stamping out Jewry in Europe"
[Ausrottung des Judentums in
Europa] or "moving them away"
[entfernen] or "getting
rid of them"
[beseitigen]. How easy
it would have been for this loquacious Führer to have
made just one slip of the tongue just once, and to have
talked about "liquidate", for example; but he never
does.

The words that I quote above, Hitler uses again and again
in the loosest contexts -- it would shame you if I listed
them all to you, but how about just two lurid uses of the
word ausrotten
for a start: in his speech to the Nazi editors on 10
November 1938, he announces he is going to "ausrotten" the
German intellectuals; in his meeting with
Hácha on 15 March 1939, according to
Walther Hewel's note, Hitler says: "Wenn im Herbst
vorigen Jahres die Tschechoslowakei nicht nachgegeben
hätte, so wäre das tschechische Volk ausgerottet
worden."

Is this not a precise parallel with the
Ausrottung des Judentums, or
Ausrottung der jüdischen Rasse in
Europa? But you will not seriously suggest that
Hitler ever considered liquidating, murdering, the entire
Czech nation? Why do we apply the double standards of
word-interpretation in the case of the liquidation of the
Jews; why the blind spot that afflicts every historian
whenever Hitler-and-the-Jews is the subject of research? Why
are, suddenly, the normal rules of evidence no longer
considered necessary?

Your whole case, in "Hitlers
Weltanschauung", rests on your own interpretation of
Hitler's semantics. What would you make of this public
utterance -- or Kampfparole --
by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, at a press
conference on 17 April 1943 (I found it among his papers in
Abilene, Kansas):

"As far as I am concerned, any soldier that is
killing a German is somebody for whom I have a tremendous
affection and if I can give him something so he can kill
two Germans instead of one, by golly I am going to do
it."

No, you can not safely judge any man by what he says, but
only by what he orders, commands, or subsequently endorses.
Now take this instance. On 10 November 1938, during the
night, as synagogues and Jewish properties everywhere are
blazing, Hitler intervenes and orders the senseless pogrom
to stop. How does this fit in with your view of his
Weltanschauung? (You may not believe that he actually did
intervene. Then I will happily send you in facsimile
a document issued by Rudolf Hess's staff from
Munich in Wiederholung des
Fernschreibens vom 10. November 1938, also dated 10
November 1938. It is very brief:

The fact remains, that when we apply normal rules of
evidence and believe only the documents that are genuine --
ignoring none -- a picture remains of a Hitler who becomes
disinterested in the prosecution of the Jewish issue any
longer, once he has ridden successfully to power on it;
while the lower levels, the radicals, of the Nazi party
continue the old fight against the Jews. And
that once the war begins, it is at these lower levels that
the ad hoc decision is reached, usually
an Ort und Stelle, to murder
the trainloads of European Jews deported (deported on
Hitler's orders) to the East. And that the murderers look
upwards to Heydrich and even to Himmler for
approval for their actions. And that Himmler -- e. g. in his
famous speeches in October 1943 -- proudly accepts the
responsibility for having taken this decision himself.

You cannot -- although you and every other historian
until me have -- ignore the documents that I quoted in
HITLER'S WAR that establish Hitler's
very different position on the Jewish issue. You complain
that my facsimile on page 505 appears to refer only to one
specific instance. It does not, as reference to the whole
file of Himmler's Telephone Conversations (NA film T84 roll
25) shows. (Incidentally, why has no other German historian
ever bothered to use this file? So far as I know only
Peter Hoffmann has, in Canada). See for instance
Himmler's conversation with Heydrich, Berlin, 17 November
1941 12,15 -- 12,30 Uhr. (You recall, Heydrich is at this
time busy planning the conference later famous as the
Wannsee conference.) "... Verhältnisse im
Generalgouvernement. Beseitigung der Juden. . ." Then, after
the conversation
that I print on page 505, Himmler telephones SS
Gruppenführer Pohl in Berlin next
day, 1 December 1941: ..... Juden zu bleiben."

And so on, with discussions about the
Lage im Generalgouvernement,
Hitler's ruling that die
Endlösung der Judenfrage was to be postponed
until after the war was over (Frühjahr 1942 -- see
Staff Evidence Analysis sheet for Nuremberg
Document 4025 -- PS) and a no less illuminating call
from Himmler to Heydrich on 20. April 1942, again from
Hitler's headquarters: "..... Keine
Vernichtung der Zigeuner." These are documents, this
is proof, it is evidence acceptable in any court of law,
requiring no more brainwork than the obvious conclusion that
these are being telephoned from Hitler's headquarters by
Himmler, because Hitter has made his views quite plain to
Himmler. For similar evidence, see my book, particularly the
notes on pages 850f and 857f. I will not mention here the
evidence of "double
book-keeping" by the SS, to provide a "clean" set of
books for showing to the Führer. I describe this enough
in my book.

Admittedly, you ask some brave questions in your last
paragraph on page 82. But what about the really big
questions raised by the documents which I print and others
ignore? and what about explaining why the Germans first
transported the Jews east and only then murdered them,
instead of murdering them an Ort und
Stelle, or in some local forests in western Europe?
My thesis is the only acceptable answer -- that the
transportation was done in obeyance of Hitler's orders;
while the murdering was done by those on the spot, on their
own initiative.

Finally, having read your book, my own views stand
intact. Do not rely any longer on Raul Hilberg for
support. I have corresponded with him, and in one
of his earliest letters he stated views that are very
similar to my own. And certainly do not rely on the
1945
Bormann Verrnerke published by François
Genoud and Trevor-Roper; as Professor Baumgart
of Freiburg will tell you -- and so can I, for that
matter -- they are clever forgeries, put together (in
French!) by Genoud and others many years after the war.

Genoud admits as much. The English text published in good
faith by Trevor-Roper was translated from the French; so was
the German text that Genoud showed me about seven years ago
in Lausanne. However, he is a good friend of mine and I
would not like this fact widely publicized. It just amused
me to see that Joachim Fest made so much use of them.
It is one more reason, Professor Jäckel, why I am
unhappy about using other books as sources.

You may feel you would like to answer some of these
points, above. Please do. Perhaps you would like to publish
the correspondence. I have no objection. I have transferred
my complete Sammelakte on the
Judenfrage to the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in
Munich, where anybody can see it and try to prove me wrong.
I will happily pay a
donation of $1,000 to any charity that any challenger
cares to name, if he or she can find even one wartime
document proving that Hitler ordered, or even knew of, the
biological liquidation (murder) of the western European Jews
before, say, October 1943.* (As I say in my own book
HITLER'S WAR from that point on Hitler can have had no sound
excuse for not knowing the truth about what was going
on.)

Yours sincerely,

(David. Irving)

[To:] Professor Eberhard Jäckel

Universität Stuttgart

* I made the same challenge in the United
States. I still have the $1,000. Incidentally, one writer
(Professor Walter Laqueur) quotes Albert
Zoller's book Hitler
Privat, the alleged memoirs of Hitler's secretary
Christa Schroeder, as "proof". Frau Schroeder told me
long ago that Zoller faked much of the book, putting
statements into her mouth that she never made: including
that one.